People on GAG seem to tolerate a lot from something called admins and mods under the aegis that this not a paid service. You are sadly mistaken?

Several major US Universities are engaged in a widespread study of what they call 'hidden costs' to the Internet consumer. In the case of GAG, we pay these fees by being inundated with advertising. It is reasonably harmless when all we encounter are pretty little patches of color we can click on voluntarily, but how many times have you started to read someone's post and your finger accidently hit on something that directs you to a page you had no intention of visiting? Or for tab users such as myself, with onscreen keyboards, how often do you click on a comment window, only to have a potato chip ad obscure your view entirely until you 'x' it out? I myself easily spend three minutes per session in such activities, three minutes I cannot afford.

There is no official indication yet what action is or is not going to come out of this study, but unofficial word is that sites such as GAG may face a 20% increase in domain fees unless they reduce their ad space by just as much AND eliminate ALL pop ups.

Any response?

Updates:

OK people, wake up. If I have to download ad blockers, I am still investing my time. If I have to climb some magic ladder and get a pretty swirly by my name, that is a condition for being free of this nuisance. I am not saying GAG is not a valuable forum, but don't worship it like it's some kind of Ubergod.

Most Helpful Guy

What Girls Said 5

Once you reach level 7 or 8 the ads will disappear for you when you log in. Also you can just use Ad Block or something if you don't want to see ads on any website.

Only the administrators have control over what kind of advertising goes on the site. Moderators (and super and uber moderators) have no control over that. We don't have to pay to use sites like this one because the revenue comes fron advertising. No website is truly free.

The ads go away once you're at level 7. Although, I still get those tiny ads that pop up sometimes when I'm typing. I also have ads on the sides with the feed but those don't really bother me other than the fact that they're ads.

Asker - we can hide posts we think are against the posting guidelines, but only the admins have the decision of whether or not to actually remove the post in question. Many times the hidden post is put back online by the admins.